What impact will the flood crisis have on Polish politics?

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Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and is published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

By Aleks Szczerbiak

In spite of his mistaken reassurances at the onset of the floods, by being seen to take personal charge of the crisis management operation the prime minister managed to emerge relatively unscathed politically from his government’s most serious “stress test” since it took office ten months ago.

Although the post-flood reconstruction phase will be much more challenging, beyond the affected areas, public and media attention has already moved on to other issues.

The government’s most serious “stress test”

During the last two weeks of September, the political scene was almost completely dominated by the major flooding that devastated parts of southern and western Poland.

The worst impact was in the Lower Silesia, Opole and Silesia regions where in some towns overflowing rivers caused widespread damage leaving the areas accessible only to the emergency services.

Embankments gave way, as thousands of people were left without power and cut off from the outside world. Homes were damaged and, as the water level dropped, it became clear that nine people had lost their lives.

To facilitate rescue and relief operations, the government introduced, for the first time in Poland’s history, a so-called “state of natural disaster” (stan klęski żywiołowej), one of three extraordinary legal tools provided in the country’s constitution, covering 750 municipalities and 2.4 million people.

The floods came at a very awkward moment for Poland’s ruling coalition. Last December, a new coalition government led by Donald Tusk, who had served as Polish prime minister between 2007-14 and then European Council President from 2014-19, was sworn in ending the eight-year rule of the right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party.

Tusk is leader of the liberal-centrist Civic Platform (PO) which once again became the country’s main governing party.

The new coalition also includes the eclectic Third Way (Trzecia Droga) alliance – which itself comprises the agrarian-centrist Polish Peasant Party (PSL), and the liberal-centrist Poland 2050 (Polska 2050) grouping formed to capitalise on TV personality-turned-politician Szymon Hołownia’s strong third place in the 2020 presidential election – and the smaller New Left (Nowa Lewica) party, the main component of a broader Left (Lewica) electoral alliance.

As the governing coalition approached the first anniversary of its October 2023 parliamentary election victory many of its supporters were becoming increasingly frustrated and disillusioned, with a growing sense that it was not moving quickly enough to implement its campaign promises.

Although in theory the floods put day-to-day party politics on the back-burner, the Tusk administration knew that it would be very much in the spotlight with an extremely small margin for error in what was its most serious crisis and “stress test” since it took office.

In the past, being seen to mishandle flood crises was felt to have had very damaging consequences for Polish governments.

The opposition fumbles its initial response

However, the government was helped by PiS’s initial, tone-deaf reaction to the crisis.

For example, on the same day that media attention was focusing increasingly on the floods as the most important news story, the party chose to organise a protest rally outside the justice ministry where it accused the government of undermining democracy and violating the rule, and declared that it represented foreign interests, particularly Germany, that were seeking to destroy the Polish state so that the country could be brought under external control.

Such humanitarian crisis situations are always difficult ones for opposition parties. The government is inevitably the centre of attention because only it has the instruments to deal with the crisis effectively, while engaging in political arguments when public attention is focused on human misfortune is very risky.

Indeed, it took PiS some time to nuance its message properly. Its initial response swung from, on the one hand, attacking the government vigorously for allegedly failing to tackle the crisis effectively, to calling upon politicians to put aside their differences and co-operate in helping provide relief to the flood victims when it realised that its earlier stance did not chime with the popular mood.

Tusk’s mistaken reassurances

Gradually, however, PiS found its feet and, learning its lesson from the justice ministry protest, cancelled a congress, meant originally to revamp the party and provide it with new impetus ahead of the autumn, planned for the end of September.

In particular, PiS focused on the reassuring remarks made by Tusk to journalists on 13 September, just as the flood crisis was building up, that the weather forecasts were not overly alarming and there was no cause for panic.

The party accused Tusk of trivialising the flood threat and failing to warn residents of the hardest-hit towns of the impending disaster. This failure to act quickly and decisively was, they argued, in spite of the fact that the government had ample evidence that an extreme weather event was imminent provided to them by various forecasters several days in advance.

Tusk was well aware that the question of how effectively the government was felt to have dealt with the flood crisis could determine both the administration’s and his own personal political future.

When asked about compensation for victims during the summer 1997 floods, memories of which are still strongly embedded in the Polish consciousness, the then-prime minister Włodzimierz Cimoszewicz stated that it was necessary for farmers to insure themselves.

This, seemingly obvious but presentationally unfortunate, statement ended up dominating the political debate surrounding the 1997 floods. Many commentators felt that it contributed to the defeat of Cimoszewicz’s party, the communist successor Democratic Left Alliance (SLD), in the parliamentary election held later that year.

Tusk’s supporters accused PiS of manipulating the prime minister’s statement, arguing that his remarks were accurate at the time that they were made and that there was no point stirring up panic when the weather situation was uncertain. They said that his statement was taken out of context and that Tusk had also made it clear that the government did not under-estimate the danger and was prepared for any eventuality.

However, even some commentators sympathetic to the government felt that his overall tone was too reassuring and that residents of the affected areas could have failed to capture the nuances of his message – and, as a consequence, to prepare for an evacuation until the last moment.

Indeed, the government’s critics, including several local government leaders and officials from the affected regions, argued that, during the first few days of the crisis, the Tusk administration‘s response was delayed and chaotic with many flooded areas left to fend for themselves.

Tusk takes personal charge

To minimise the damage caused by his unfortunate remarks, Tusk quickly launched a public relations offensive. He took personal charge of, and did not just dominate but completely monopolised, the government’s crisis management operation, to the extent that he even intervened in Instagram posts, pushing both the opposition and other government ministers into the background.

Tusk also took the unusual step of holding live twice-daily televised meetings of his crisis headquarters staff, which were moved to the affected areas. Even if a lot of this was simply political marketing, Tusk’s objective was to send a clear message to the public that he was a hard working prime minister with his finger on the pulse and managing the crisis effectively.

Moreover, the fact that €10 billion of EU aid for countries affected by the flood wave, half of which was due to go to Poland, was announced at a hastily organised mini-summit called at Tusk’s initiative no doubt played into this narrative; although government critics downplayed its significance arguing that it simply involved redirecting existing EU funds already earmarked for Polish infrastructure projects.

Interestingly, by refusing to hold a special session of parliament during the first week of the crisis to discuss the government’s plans to introduce a state of natural disaster, Tusk did not have to share the limelight with Szymon Hołownia, the current speaker of the Sejm, the more powerful lower parliamentary chamber.

He thereby marginalised a possible future rival from within the governing camp in next year’s crucial presidential election, in which Tusk may stand as the PO candidate.

While government supporters said that the publicly televised crisis staff meetings ensured transparency and openness, PiS argued that they were a simply a public relations stunt to promote Tusk personally at the cost of the effective functioning of the state bodies responsible for dealing with the crisis.

Indeed, even some commentators sympathetic to the government drew analogies between Tusk’s approach to crisis management and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s habit of publicly reprimanding subordinate officials during televised meetings in the style of a “good Tsar” rebuking “worthless boyars”.

The government emerges unscathed politically

Putting aside the question of whether, objectively, the government really did everything that could be expected of it or reacted to the floods too late and inadequately, from a narrow political perspective it was subjective overall public impressions that mattered at this stage.

In this sense, Tusk and the government appears to have emerged from the flood crisis relatively unscathed politically, for the moment at least.

Opinion polls showed that respondents were fairly evenly divided in their evaluation of the government’s and prime minister’s handling of the crisis, with a narrow majority approving, and split very much on party lines suggesting that the governing parties’ voters were largely impervious to the opposition’s criticisms.

This was a good outcome for the Tusk administration. Natural disasters and the ensuing humanitarian crises are a demanding test for public authorities even in well-organised states. There will always be widespread media coverage of victims with genuinely moving stories that hold the government responsible for their plight.

Although Tusk took a big political risk in appearing to shoulder full, personal responsibility for managing the crisis, he had to somehow negate the impact of his earlier remarks downplaying the flood threat.

He would probably have risked losing out even more if he had chosen to take more of a back seat role. Indeed, some commentators suggested that he did so because he lacked faith in the state institutions to run the operation without his personal intervention.

Tusk also had a great deal of luck. All of his public relations prowess would have counted for little, and PiS’s argument that he was focused on self-promotion to distract attention from his ineffectiveness in dealing with the crisis would have had much greater purchase, if the floods had been worse, particularly if a major town or city had been flooded as was the case with Wrocław in 1997.

Public and media attention has already moved on

So the government managed to recover ground politically following Tusk’s potentially hugely damaging, over-optimistic statement at the beginning of the crisis.

However, his model of high profile personalised crisis management will be less effective in keeping on top of the more complex governing processes that will characterise the next, much more challenging reconstruction and recovery phase. This will involve the marshalling of huge funds and coordinating the detailed plans of a wide range of government ministries in the process of rebuilding the flood-affected areas.

These regions are generally considered to be electorally crucial ones for the ruling party. There is obviously a risk that if this goes badly then voters in the flood-affected areas will use next year’s presidential election to pass judgement on the governing camp, especially if Tusk decides to run as its candidate.

However, looking beyond the actual affected regions themselves, it is striking how quickly the news cycle appears to have moved on from the flood crisis. A humanitarian disaster that dominated Polish national news coverage for a fortnight – indeed, the most serious crisis that the government has faced since taking office – has already been completely overshadowed by other issues and events.

Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

Main image credit: Kancelaria Premiera/Flickr (under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Aleks Szczerbiak is Professor of Politics at the University of Sussex. The original version of this article appeared here.